Iran warn-ed yesterday it may quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if forced to limit its nuclear programme. In a strongly worded speech to huge crowds marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said that Palestinians and Iraqis were suffering from "the real Holocaust".

"Until now, the Islamic republic's policy was to use nuclear technology for peaceful ends," he said, a week after Iran was reported to the UN Security Council amid fears it is seeking nuclear weapons.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has continued its nuclear drive within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NPT, but if we see that you want to deprive us of our right using these regulations, know that the people will revise their policy in this regard," he warned.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were out under Tehran's winter sunshine, answering a call from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to put on a show of force in the face of mounting international pressure.

The West wants Iran to abandon uranium enrichment work, which can be extended from making reactor fuel to the fissile core of a nuclear weapon.

Iran maintains that it only wants to generate electricity and that its fuel cycle work is therefore permitted by the NPT.

"The Iranian people will never renounce their nuclear rights," Ahmadinejad vowed, drawing deafening chants from the crowd of "We will not give in!"

He also repeated his view that Nazi Germany's mass killing of Jews was a "myth".

"For more than 60 years, this myth has enabled the Zionists to blackmail the Western countries, justify the killing of women and children and make them refugees in occupied land," he said. "The real Holocaust is happening today in Palestine and Iraq."

PHOTO CAPTION

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives a speech during a demonstration to mark the 27th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution in Tehran. (AFP)

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